May 2009

How an organization that calls itself “The Race” can be non-racist is a puzzle far to deep for me to figure out — JR

Questions over the fact that President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor, claims membership in La Raza, which has promoted driver’s licenses for illegal aliens, amnesty programs and no immigration law enforcement by state and local police, are spreading, with both CNN and MSNBC featuring discussion of the issue with a severe critic of illegal immigration.

WND reported earlier this week when it was confirmed the American Bar Association listed La Raza, which means “the Race,” as one of the groups in which Sotomayor is a member. Talk radio icon Rush Limbaugh described Sotomayor as a “racist” based on her statement that she should be able to make better judgments than a white man, not on her La Raza membership. But former U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., took the criticism a step further in his interviews on the two networks. On MSNBC, Tancredo said Sotomayor should be disqualified from the court nomination because of her remarks.

He said when her actual statements are reviewed, the issue is clear. “If I were to say something like this, ‘I think only a white man could judge the law really well. I think a white man could interpret it better than a brown woman,’ would that disqualify me? I would think so. I would hope so,” he said.

Sotomayor’s actual statement, made during a 2001 speech at the University of California’s Berkeley School of Law, was: “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

It was published the next year in the Berkeley La Raza Law Journal. “It would disqualify anyone else,” Tancredo said. On CNN, he described La Raza as a “Latino KKK without the hoods or the nooses,” and suggested if a judge belongs to such an organization, something needs to be provided in the way of an explanation “to convince me and a lot of other people that it’s got nothing to do with race.”

Even the White House jumped into the fray, with press secretary Robert Gibbs explaining today the judge was “simply making the point that experiences are relevant to the process of judging” and conceding the word choice probably wasn’t the best. “I think he’d say her word choice in 2001 was poor,” said Gibbs, asked about White House thoughts on the controversy. “I think if she had the speech to do all over again I think she’d change that word,” said Gibbs, when asked about Sotomayor’s reference to “better.”

At the Colorado Independent, Ernest Luning reported that La Raza officials didn’t think much of Tancredo’s comments. “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” spokeswoman Lisa Navarrete told the newspaper. “He’s defamed our organization and told falsehoods about our organization without any basis in fact or evidence. That’s not who we are or what we do.”

Tancredo often has taken politically unpopular positions, one time suggesting that the threat of a U.S. bombing of Mecca should be on the table if that’s what it would take to prevent another terrorist attack on the United States.

At the Swamp Politics political blog, Mark Silva wrote that Tancredo might not even be a factor of the debate over Sotomayor “if he hadn’t sought the Republican Party’s presidential nomination last year as an outspoken critic of illegal immigration – and if he hadn’t also denounced the National Council of La Raza … as a ‘Latino KKK without the hoods.'”

Tancredo said, “There is no one else I can think of who could possibly have said the kind of things she said, if they were reported accurately, about the benefits of being a brown woman as opposed to being a white man in interpreting the law, and nobody could look at that and say that that was not a racist, sexist statement that would disqualify anybody else.”

On the Politico forums page, an anonymous participant wrote: “It seems that as we have had racism from white Americans in our past, now white Americans are experiencing reverse racism from other races. Neither is better than the other. In both cases, this is an example of racism. What happened in the past is one thing, but we are living in the present. People have a chance to move on and not play the race card anymore. Is there anyone brave enough to say that attacks on white Americans are just as bad as attacks on Americans of other colors?”

“I’m not saying she’s a racist, but the statement sure is,” columnist Ann Coulter said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “Imagine a judicial nominee said ‘my experience as a white man makes me better than a latina woman,'” blogged former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga. “Wouldn’t they have to withdraw? New racism is no better than old racism. A white man racist nominee would be forced to withdraw. Latina woman racist should also withdraw.”

As WND previously reported, La Raza was condemned in 2006 by former U.S. Rep. Charles Norwood, R-Ga., as a radical “pro-illegal immigration lobbying organization that supports racist groups calling for the secession of the western United States as a Hispanic-only homeland.” Norwood urged La Raza to renounce its support of the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan – which sees “the Race” as part of an ethnic group that one day will reclaim Aztlan, the mythical birthplace of the Aztecs. In Chicano folklore, Aztlan includes California, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico and parts of Colorado and Texas.

The Legislature balked again this session at measures that target illegal immigration — owing partly to the divided House and to questions of constitutionality.

“For some folks, these are line-in-the-sand-type bills … Some bills have opportunity for discussion; some don’t,” said Rep. Burt Solomons, R-Carrollton, chairman of the House State Affairs Committee, where several of the measures died this year.

Lawmakers introduced numerous proposals, many of them repeats from past sessions, that would stiffen penalties and deny benefits to illegal immigrants. But the vast majority never made it out of committee, including a ban on “sanctuary cities,” which do not enforce immigration laws; a tax on money transfers to Mexico, Central America and South America; and a block on citizenship for U.S.-born children whose parents are illegal immigrants.

The standstill has led some to speculate that state Republicans have backed off the contentious issue, or at least have decided that it should be handled in Washington.

“I think the leadership got the message,” said Luis Figueroa, legislative staff attorney for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. “What is the party going to stand for? Anti-business? Anti-Latino? These are not the two messages they want their party to be offering.”

The 44-member Mexican American Legislative Caucus discussed the issue with Texas House Speaker Joe Straus, R-San Antonio, in meetings before and after his rise to the speaker’s post, members said. Although no formal agreement was made on what immigration bills, if any, would get a vote, there was an agreement to “govern from the center,” said Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, caucus chairman.

“We’ve demonstrated pretty clearly we can keep those bills from ever coming to the floor,” said Martinez Fischer, a San Antonio Democrat. “Joe understands the idea of what comes around goes around — we just have a philosophical respect for each other.”

Straus’ office acknowledged a meeting with the group but would not discuss details.

Rep. Larry Taylor, head of the House Republican Caucus, said immigration hasn’t been a priority this session because of the dominance of other items, such as windstorm insurance.

“There’s a limit to what we can do at the state level,” the Friendswood Republican said.

There’s also the issue of litigation, said Rep. David Swinford, R-Dumas. He said lawmakers do not want to act because they were told in 2007 that several of the bills, including one to block citizenship for U.S.-born children with illegal immigrant parents, are unconstitutional. That claim was echoed by numerous lawmakers, including Taylor.

Swinford was chairman of the House State Affairs Committee in 2007, when many of the same bills failed to gain traction. He said that after consulting with a focus group of constitutional lawyers, including representatives from the attorney general’s office, he determined that some of the bills could drag the state all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Swinford then stated publicly that he would not give any of the bills a vote.

But none of that has stopped Rep. Leo Berman, R-Tyler, who has repeatedly introduced legislation that deals with illegal immigration over the past two years, including a bill that would restrict in-state college tuition to U.S. citizens.

Berman, who plans to run for governor in 2010 and to make immigration a keystone of his platform, acknowledged that his proposals would result in litigation, but that’s the point, he said. Berman said that he thinks the state would win in court but that lawmakers should not concern themselves with questions of constitutionality. That is the judicial system’s job, he said.

“Many of our bills were good bills,” Berman said. “If the federal government isn’t doing it, then the states should do it.”

On May 18, Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, managed to shepherd legislation through the Senate that would require law enforcement officers to check the immigration status of people imprisoned for certain felonies. The measure passed with near-unanimous support, but it failed to get a vote in the House Corrections Committee.

This is mostly just self-righteous posing that will collapse like a deflated balloon in due course. The Home Office has said that it will remove their accreditation to take overseas students if they do not comply and that would be a big hit to their revenues. Keeping records of attendance at tutorials is already common in some disciplines so extending that to all disciplines should not be onerous

University academics say they will boycott new visa rules for overseas students that would make them into “immigration snoopers”. Delegates at the University and College Union’s annual conference said they did not want to become a branch of the UK Border Agency.

Under the new rules universities are expected to monitor whether overseas students really attend their courses. The Home Office said such things were part of their normal duty of care. Institutions must also report concerns that a student could be involved in terrorism.

In a debate at the conference, in Bournemouth, delegates argued that the rules would place a strain on the relationship between staff and students from outside the European Union. General secretary Sally Hunt said: “UCU members are educators not border guards.” She said later: “Politically, UCU is absolutely opposed to this legislation and we know that many members have strong and principled moral objections as members of society and as professional educators. “One of the more pernicious effects of this new system will be to turn our members into an extra arm of the police force, placing monitoring and reporting responsibilities onto academic and support staff.”

One of the resolutions tabled for discussion said the new system “makes educators into immigration snoopers which could damage UK education irreparably”. It deplored “this pandering to anti-immigration racism” and committed the union to “non-compliance with all such policing and surveillance duties”.

But a Home Office spokesman said: “Educational institutions have a duty of care to all their students and checking that they are attending and making progress in their studies is part of that responsibility. “The records we expect education providers to keep are those which most will keep for their own purposes anyway.”

Mainstream media comments on the BNP are uniformly vituperative and often misleading. In the interests of balance, therefore, I put a case for the defence, written by J. P. Straley

I’m not a Brit, but as an American and an avid internet observer of the British scene, I have been fascinated to watch the rise of what might be an effective nationalist political party in Britain.

The British National Party, under its leader Nick Griffin, has been touting Britain’s elections for Members of the European Parliament, to be held on June 4, as its breakthrough. It hopes to capture five MEP seats, with the possibility of a few more if all the cards fall its way. (Which seems to be happening, as the extraordinary U.K. House of Commons expenses scandal in Westminster engulfs ever more British MPs of all parties.)

Commenters in the Brit political blogosphere predict anywhere from zero to five seats, with three as the most common guess. Any seats at all will produce public funding for the party, a very substantial boost, and will raise their visibility in Britain.

It’s happened before. Another small party, the United Kingdom Independence Party [UKIP], whose main plank is to take Britain out of the European Union, was very successful in the last MEP election. But UKIP contests few local elections in Britain. For the upcoming June 4 MEP election, polls show it losing ground. Part of this may be the difference in styles. BNP is a bit scruffy and makes a fuss, while UKIP appears to be much more urbane. Unhappy British voters—particularly former Labor voters—appear to like the fuss.

I know I’m not supposed to like the BNP. Because it openly states that ethnicity matters, the British press and TV treat the BNP as if it is toxic waste. The U.S. Mainstream Media follows suit, when it mentions the party at all. The BNP did rise out of the ashes of a more strident National Front Party, and some of its leaders allegedly have or have had radical links (sort of like Obama and Jeremiah Wright, although Griffin has distanced himself much more effectively). All I can say, at a distance of 3000 miles, what the BNP is actually saying and doing now looks rational, reasonable and pretty darn good to me.

Nationalist politics acknowledge the ethnic dimension of nations. Levelers assert there is no difference between peoples, and happily dilute—even replace—the heritage peoples of the West. Nowhere are they more active than in Britain.

I use the term “Heritage Peoples.” This is intuitively obvious, but let us see what BNP says about being “British”:

“We mean the bonds of culture, race, identity and roots of the native White peoples of the British Isles. We have lived in these islands near on 40,000 years. We were made by these islands, and these islands are our home. When we in the BNP talk about being British, we talk about the native peoples who have lived in these islands since before the Stone Age, and the relatively small numbers of peoples of identical race, such as the Saxons, Vikings and Normans, and the Irish, who have come here and assimilated.”[BNP FAQ, 2007]

Indeed, in an April 23 quote, Griffin himself describes the ethnic quality of Britishness in plain language:

“We don’t subscribe to the politically correct fiction that just because they happen to be born in Britain, a Pakistani is a Briton. They’re not. They remain of Pakistani stock,’ he added.

“You can’t say that especially large numbers of people can come from the rest of the world and assume an English identity without denying the English their own identity, and I would say that’s wrong.

Many whites in Britain appear to be self-haters, and are quite happy to trade Cotswolds country churches for mosques and minarets. So you can imagine the calumny thrown at Griffin over this remark!

Indeed, the “racist” epithet is thrown at BNP every day. BNP replies that it prefers a truly multicultural world where British people are clearly British and peoples from other countries are likewise unmistakable in their provenance. This is not an original policy with BNP, of course—in the second half of the twentieth century colonies of whites throughout the third world were encouraged to pack up and leave.

The BNP’s policies strike me as candid and accessible. Here, for instance, is BNP policy on immigration:

“On current demographic trends, we, the native British people, will be an ethnic minority in our own country within sixty years.

“To ensure that this does not happen, and that the British people retain their homeland and identity, we call for an immediate halt to all further immigration, the immediate deportation of criminal and illegal immigrants, and the introduction of a system of voluntary resettlement whereby those immigrants who are legally here will be afforded the opportunity to return to their lands of ethnic origin assisted by generous financial incentives both for individuals and for the countries in question.”[Policies—BNP Website]

Here is a nationalist party that cherishes its Heritage People and states clearly the goal to retain the traditional ethnic balance of their nation. It recognizes the fact of the demographic tsunami—something even sensible observers in the U.S. shrink from doing. The BNP intends to halt the immigrant flood and roll back the replacement of its Heritage Peoples. What’s wrong with that?

Clever use of the internet has partially defused the uniformly negative media coverage of BNP. The BNP site offers fresh material daily, and it pulls no punches with its stories. There is certainly interest in the site. According to Alexa internet ratings, the BNP has far, far more traffic than Conservatives, LibDems, or Labor.

The BNP forces are also masters of the You Tube media. A single Y-T inquiry with key word “BNP” yielded forty pages of listings, albeit there were many dissenting views such as the one with the uncivilized title, “BNP Are C_nts”. Whichever side of the BNP divide you stand on, if you like your material in movie-form, it’s ready for you.

By no means is BNP a wholly electronic communicator. In those area that offer promise, BNP organizers canvas door to door with pamphlets and face-to-face explanations why BNP says, “Britain first!” This year, for the European Parliament election, it has sent out 29 million pieces of mail!

British race-relation quangos and their fellow travelers in government are well-aware of the BNP and Griffin. In December 2004, he was arrested after a covert taping (by a BBC i.e. tax-funded operative) of a speech before a private gathering. BNP and Griffin identify the increasing Muslim population in Britain as one of the chief threats to the country, and in the December 2004 meeting he was captured on tape as suggesting that Islam was a “…wicked and vicious faith.” He knew that he was treading the edge of the draconian Race Relations law, and further said he could possibly get seven years prison for such a statement. Government pursued just that course, charging four counts of “incitement to racial hatred.” Griffin was eventually acquitted on all counts. Not surprisingly, the BNP proposes to abolish all restrictions on free speech, absent only “…common law restrictions on incitement to violence…”

Another grim reminder of official antipathy: BNP membership—that is, membership in a democratic and legal political party—is grounds for local governments to sack police and teachers. In the fall of 2008 the party membership list was leaked, and many such firings occurred.

Is BNP a one-issue anti-immigration party? Widening its scope seems to have been a part of Griffin’s leadership. The issues of EU membership (out now, please), trade (mild protectionism), job protection (part of the immigration and guest worker issue), crime (unshackle police, allow persons to resist an intruder without penalty), defense (small, competent forces, avoid foreign wars), energy (develop alternative fuels and energy, promote advanced nuclear power), environment, education, and health are all covered in the manifesto. All told BNP’s policy seems to be fairly conventional nationalism, bent on internal improvement and de-emphasizing foreign involvement, with an added tinge of social democracy. Voters certainly have a choice—BNP policies are a rather stark contrast to the Lib-Lab-Con party line.

BNP strategy seems to be to build the party in disaffected regions (London boroughs of Barking and Dagenham, and Burnley northeast of Liverpool are examples), and let success in electing members to local offices (town and city “councilors”) increase the appeal of their brand. BNP is eager for councilors to render good service to constituents, though of course some do poorly in the event—an artifact of governing versus merely opposing government) Electing local councilors builds the party machinery and provides experience in actual government for members, as well as building a positive picture to combat negative propaganda.

There are no BNP Members of Britain’s Parliament at this time. It takes determination, organization, and grit to make an election-winning party from scratch. But the BNP is making progress:

Total votes in General Elections

1983 14,621

1987 553

1992 7,631

1997 35,832

2001 47,129

2007 192,748

Make no mistake, the BNP remains very much a minority party. The ’05 results represent only 0.7% of the total voters, country-wide. But the 2007 Welsh showing was 4.3% of the vote, and in the ’08 London Mayoral contest more than 5% of voters went BNP. The party has discrete areas of strength, and these are where it means to win MEP seats.

The stakes are high for Britain. Shall it retain its traditional identity, or become a collection of synthetic citizens, whose opinion is perhaps better polled as mere consumer preference?

It would be interesting to see a country-wide nationalist political party in the US so straightforward in its platform, and so effective in its party-building effort. If BNP are successful on June 4, it will be a lesson to patriots throughout Europe and the US.

Part of the reason that the federal government made a big deal (and spent a whole lot of money–much of wasted on dud machines and programs) on getting alien fingerprints when they enter the country (and when they leave, if ever) is that aliens–including terrorists–often give fake names and fake IDs. Without fingerprints, there is no way to ever keep any record of who they are and whether an alien who has already been deported or committed violent crimes is trying to re-enter.

But now, in case aliens and terrorists didn’t know, the Department of Homeland Security and USA Today–getting info from the Annals of Oncology (yes, a cancer magazine)–are providing instructions on how to obscure or get rid of fingerprints. Oh, and by the way, here’s yet another reason to profile Arabs and Muslims–you know, the work that Americans just won’t do.

Before they can enter the USA, virtually all non-U.S. citizens 14 to 79 have their fingerprints screened at the airport or seaport to confirm their identity and make sure they’re not a security threat.

Stop right there. Why are we NOT fingerprinting kids under 14? Ever see the age of several of the Muslim homicide bombers in Gaza? Often they are just kids. I guess we’re saying, as long as you get into America before 14, you’re in and we can’t trace you.

But what if you don’t have fingerprints?

That was the dilemma faced by a Singapore cancer patient whose chemotherapy drug caused severe peeling of the skin on his hands and feet, which erased his fingerprints. His oncologist describes the case in a letter published online today by the Annals of Oncology.

The 62-year-old man was taking capecitabine, sold in the USA as Xeloda, for head and neck cancer that had spread to his bones, chest and abdomen (in the USA, Xeloda is approved for the treatment of breast and colorectal cancer that has spread). He developed hand-foot syndrome, a drug side effect that causes the skin on the hands and feet to peel.

After taking capecitabine for more than three years, the man, who wasn’t identified by doctors, flew to the USA to visit relatives. He was detained at the U.S. airport by Customs and Border Protection officers for four hours because they couldn’t detect his fingerprints, his doctors, from the National Cancer Centre Singapore, write.

Finally, the officers were satisfied that he wasn’t a security threat and allowed him to enter the country. They told him to travel with a letter from his oncologist explaining his lack of fingerprints.

Two years ago, Spanish cancer doctors reported a similar story about a 39-year-old flight attendant detained for several hours at a U.S. airport until her doctor faxed an explanation that the capecitabine she’d been taking for breast cancer had erased her fingerprints.

Many other drugs can cause hand-foot syndrome, but there is little information about whether they lead to fingerprint loss, Su-Pin Choo, one of the co-authors of the new letter, said in an e-mail.

“Hand-foot syndrome is more common with capecitabine than with most other drugs,” Choo wrote. Fingerprint loss probably is also related to how long a patient takes a drug that causes hand-foot syndrome, he said, and he added that patients receiving a continuous infusion of 5FU, a common cancer drug, also should consider carrying a letter attesting to that if they travel to the USA.

In the world, an estimated one in 50 people lack matchable fingerprints. “We have standard operating procedures that take that into account,” says the Department of Homeland Security’s Anna Hinken. She says Customs and Border Protection officers decide whether to admit such people on the basis of other physical and behavioral traits.

Wow, way to go, Homeland Security! Now, terrorists and illegal aliens know your methods and procedures on this issue and will take advantage to game the system some more. Because, hey, we don’t have enough of that already.

This is brainless. And it’s why we need to profile.
But for now, here’s what’s on the Al-Qaeda shopping list: loads of capecitabine a/k/a Xeloda. Oh, and as for the doctor’s notes, well, as I’ve already noted on this site, time and again, there are plenty of Muslim doctors who support Islamic terrorism, take part in it, and help illegal aliens into the U.S.

*** UPDATE: Hey, just in case terrorists and illegal aliens don’t have the proper back story on why they don’t have fingerprints, our awesome Department of Homeland Security gave USA Today some great excuses for aliens to tell Customs and Border Protection agents:

In the usual way, the newspaper makes no comment on the origins of Waqas Arshad but you don’t have to know much to recognize it as a Pakistani or Indian Muslim name. There are many such people in Britain as a result of the negligible immigration controls in recent years. Waqas Arshad seems to have been quite a piece of work, starting out with drunk driving and driving while uninsured. I am sure Miss Brady’s family wish that British immigration had been more selective in the past. I literally cannot imagine an Englishman behaving the way this piece of slime did

Waqas Arshad, 24, crashed into a tree but told emergency services there was nobody inside, despite knowing 17-year-old Emily Brady was trapped in the burning wreckage. Yesterday, Miss Brady’s mother Patricia said: ‘It was despicable behaviour to make no attempt to try and pull her out of the car.’ It was only as firefighters tackled the blaze that they realised the teenager was in the car, still strapped into the passenger seat.

Arshad, of Luton, pleaded guilty yesterday to causing death by careless driving while over the alcohol limit, and causing death by driving while uninsured.

Speaking outside Luton Crown Court today Mrs Brady, 48, said the family were shocked at hearing Arshad had left his girlfriend in the car and made no effort to help her. She said: “Emily lost her precious life on November 2, changing forever the lives of those of us that love her. This was a community tragedy.” She said Emily was a full-time student at college, training to be an accountant, and worked on Saturdays at Sainsburys.

‘There is a very good reason why drinking and driving is illegal – the consequence is there are many victims,’ she added. ‘Emily lost her life so horrifically, there are many years of pain ahead. I will never recover from this enormous loss, her terrible absence will be with us until we die.

‘However, I am shocked and distressed to learn at this hearing that Waqas Arshad denied she was in the car, made no attempt to rescue her, and in fact lied to the emergency services that she was in the car, trying to conceal her body.’

Natalie Carter, prosecuting at Luton Crown Court, told the court Arshad lost control and crashed into a tree in Eversholt, Bedfordshire, at 3am on November 2 last year. But instead of calling for help, he got out of the car and did nothing. Mrs Carter said: ‘After the collision it’s plain that Emily Brady was in the passenger seat; the defendant in the driver’s seat. ‘She did not die as a result of the injuries received in the collision, which included two broken vertebrae, but she died as a result of carbonisation.’

The court – packed with relatives of Miss Brady, who lived in Dunstable – heard how firefighters answering a call from a witness asked Arshad if there was anyone in the car. He told them ‘no’. The couple had been together for about six months and had been out drinking together that night. It had been raining and the road surface was wet. Mrs Carter said Arshad had failed to negotiate a right-hand turn on the country lane and crashed into a sycamore tree. The vehicle eventually came to a halt in a field and caught fire. She told the court that both had been wearing seat belts.

Yesterday, Judge John Bevan QC told Arshad a prison sentence was inevitable. He adjourned the case and remanded the defendant in custody until sentencing on June 19. The court also heard that Arshad had been arrested for drink driving while on bail following the incident.

Given that Tamils tend to be a very aggressive lot, this is a welcome decision. Perhaps even the Leftists of the Australian government saw that violent clashes in Australia (some of which we have already seen) between Tamils and Sinhalese were best avoided

Australian immigration officials has spoken out at media reports the country will be welcoming Tamil Sri Lankans displaced by recent violence to move to Australia. The news follows reports in Australia and Sri Lanka of an Australian immigration humanitarian program that while not wholly inaccurate, ‘may have unnecessarily raised some people’s expectations’.

“The target of Australia’s humanitarian program is those applicants who are outside their home country and who are subject to persecution or substantial discrimination in their home country,” said a Department of Immigration and Citizenship spokesman.

The developments concerning Sri Lankans wanting to move to Australia has been defended by Australian immigration authorities who are keen to emphasize the views of the Australian public and consulting with refugee organisations and the UN are priorities when considering any humanitarian program.

“While applications for Australia’s humanitarian program may be lodged at the Australian High Commission in Colombo, the large majority of people who apply from within their home country will be disappointed with the outcome.

“The immediate humanitarian priority for the international community, including Australia, is to support the population in north-east Sri Lanka displaced by the conflict by helping to provide food and shelter and other assistance to stabilise living conditions.”

Background

The "line" of this blog is that immigration should be SELECTIVE. That means that:

1). A national government should be in control of it. The U.S. and U.K. governments are not but the Australian government has shown that the government of a prosperous Western country can be. Up until its loss of office in 2007, the conservative Howard government had all but eliminated illegal immigration. The present Leftist government has however restarted the flow of illegals by repealing many of the Howard government regulations.

2). Selectivity should be based on "the content of a man's character, not on the color of his skin", as MLK said. To expand that a little: Immigrants should only be accepted if they as individuals seem likely to make a positive net contribution to the country. Many "refugees" would fail that test: Muslims and Africans particularly. Educational level should usually be a pretty fair proxy for the individual's likely value to the receiving country. There will, of course, be exceptions but it is nonetheless unlikely that a person who has not successfully completed High School will make a net positive contribution to a modern Western society.

3). Immigrants should be neither barred NOR ACCEPTED solely because they are of some particular ethnic origin. Blacks are vastly more likely to be criminal than are whites or Chinese, for instance, but some whites and some Chinese are criminal. It is the criminality that should matter, not the race.

4). The above ideas are not particularly blue-sky. They roughly describe the policies of the country where I live -- Australia. I am critical of Australian policy only insofar as the "refugee" category for admission is concerned. All governments have tended to admit as refugees many undesirables. It seems to me that more should be required of them before refugees are admitted -- for instance a higher level of education or a business background.

5). Perhaps the most amusing assertion in the immigration debate is that high-income countries like the USA and Britain NEED illegal immigrants to do low-paid menial work. "Who will pick our crops?" (etc.) is the cry. How odd it is then that Australians get all the normal services of a modern economy WITHOUT illegal immigrants! Yes: You usually CAN buy a lettuce in Australia for a dollar or thereabouts. And Australia IS a major exporter of primary products.

6). I am a libertarian conservative so I reject the "open door" policy favoured by many libertarians and many Leftists. Both those groups tend to have a love of simplistic generalizations that fail to deal with the complexity of the real world. It seems to me that if a person has the right to say whom he/she will have living with him/her in his/her own house, so a nation has the right to admit to living among them only those individuals whom they choose.

I can be reached on jonjayray@hotmail.com -- or leave a comment on any post. Abusive comments will be deleted.